“I am very happy to be one just now,” said he, “in the cause of youth.”
“You were always a coxcomb,” said his unsparing critic, “and I quite expect that one of these days you will have to pay a price for it. In my opinion it is quite time the creature began to shed a few tears.”
“No, no, Caroline. Let us have the common humanity to give her the undiluted joy of her mountains as long as we can.”
Caroline shook her worldly wise old head. She grew very thoughtful indeed. There was the question of the red umbrella. But she did not alarm herself. Cheriton had played that game so often.
The days passed merrily. It was a perfect time, with hardly more than the suspicion of a cloud about the noble head of Gwydr. And as the waters of Lake Dwygy preserved their seductive and delicious coolness it is not to be wondered at that the picture of the naiad made great progress.
There was no doubt about the wonderful increase of power that had come to Jim Lascelles. Having given his days to the painting of the Goose Girl and his nights to thoughts of her, this expenditure of spirit was now manifesting itself in his brush. The naiad bade fair to be a brilliantly poetic composition, whose color had that harmonious daring that had given Monsieur Gillet an European fame. The frank treatment of the naiad’s blue eyes and yellow hair, which had made the portrait of her sister so wonderful, were here adjusted to the majestic scheme of Dwygy’s blue waters, and Gwydr’s brown slopes crowned with a golden haze, with here and there a black patch of the woods about Pen-y-Gros. Cheriton, who among his other recommendations was a trustee of the National Gallery, ministered to the pride of the painter’s mother by his outspoken praise of what he considered to be a signal work of art.
The August sunshine, however, cannot last for ever. And at last, as Muffin’s second triumphant fortnight was nearing its close, the clouds gathered about Gwydr and his brethren, and the woods of Pen-y-Gros were drenched with a sopping mist. This presently turned to a downpour of rain which lasted a day and a night, and in that period something happened.
CHAPTER XXVIII
A THUNDERBOLT
WHILE the rain was beating with monotonous persistence upon the oriel windows of Pen-y-Gros Castle, Araminta was summoned to Aunt Caroline’s boudoir. So little did that artless being suspect calamity that she obeyed the summons joyfully, because she felt convinced that Aunt Caroline was to confer with her as to whether Muffin would like to stay still longer. But it proved to be something else.
Aunt Caroline was looking very bleak and formidable, and Lord Cheriton, who was present also, had never seemed so much like a parent, so benevolently unbending was his manner.